Manage Important Business Information with Google My Business

July 15, 2017

Most business owners will find that it’s quite easy to jump into the Google My Business platform and get started connecting your important business information with potential valuable customers. Keep reading below for a breakdown of what you can do with the updated Google My Business platform.

Let me know if you’d like some help setting up or optimizing your local business listing, however the information below should help give you a quick overview of what you can do to get started optimizing your Google My Business page.

The Basics of Google My Business

Start with the name of your business, determine the categories your business falls under, where your service location is, what your hours (& special hours) are, your business phone #, add a link to your website, and add interesting business photos (Interior, Exterior, At Work, Your Team, & Identity).

Completely filling out the basics of your Google My Business profile is very important and will help potential customers searching at various times of day, in different locations, and for various reasons reach your business if it matches with what they are expecting.

I’d recommend starting with the basics and you will be ahead of most of your competition. Once you have that complete, then you can focus on some of the more advanced features that Google offers.

Create a post on Google My Business

Visiting the Posts link on the side of your Google My Business will bring up a news-feed status update input box where you can post important updates. I have not posted anything yet, but as soon as I am done writing this on my blog, I will post a link. I clicked on the LEARN MORE link and got an overview of what I should be doing:

Posting through Google My Business lets you publish your events, products, and services directly to Google Search and Maps. By creating posts, you can place your timely content in front of customers when they find your business listing on Google.

This is great that Google is now allowing business owners to post directly through this business portal. As long as the business owner has claimed their profile and linked everything together including Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, and other properties, they should all play very well together. I expect this to be very big for search engine optimization and fresh relevancy in the future.

Understand Import Insights About Your Business

Where do your customers come from? Do they find your local listing on the right side of the page, do they find your organic listing? Perhaps you are paying for traffic by using Google Adwords? With the Insights tab in Google My Business you can discover how your customers search for your business. You will understand if they have viewed your information directly through Search of via Maps. Important business information including whether a customer visited your website, asked for directions, viewed your photos, and how many customers called are all available at a quick glance.

Manage Your Google Business Reviews

“Digital Word of Mouth” is one of the most important local search ranking factors and will likely influence whether a potential customer will contact you or your competition. Google makes it easy for business owners to discover what their customers have written about them.

Your customers will rate your business on a 1-5 star scale and they may also leave written comments. You will receive a notification when a customer writes a review and the Google My Business platform makes it very easy to respond.

I’m excited to be able to manage my Google business information in one easy place. Google My Business has evolved in the past few years into a platform for businesses to easily manage their vital business information and understand key performance indicators that will help them succeed.

Great job Google, I look forward to seeing more customers now that you have made it easier for everyone. What will you come up with next? 🙂

David Martin is a freelance web designer and developer with a passion for marketing and technology. He enjoys helping others learn how to use technology to improve their business and teaching others how to use the interwebs and their devices to make their lives better.

In his spare time (whatever that is), David ?s geocaching, racquetball, softball, disc golf, and staying active in the local community. He is the founder of the @bloomingtonweb Meetup group. He also works full time for @deepbluegear and @snorkelmart